Not the person you're replying to, but... all I can think about is the logistics of this.
Brand had about 24 hours to process 9/11, learn who Osama bin Laden was, then (while the towers, Pentagon, and Flight 93 were still burning) dress up as a terrorist at work the next day?
That's insane turnaround, and an impressive amount of disrespectful.
Osama bin Laden was widely known before 9/11. He was already FBI ten most wanted for US embassy attacks and the attack on the USS Cole, as well as possible involvement in the '93 wtc attack, and was name-dropped a lot in current events and politics. Brand would've known who he was.
I can't figure out a way to find evidence for/against this, but from what I remember (and this is just my own anecdotal experience) it didn't seem like Osama bin Laden was exactly a dinner table topic for the vast majority of people until after 9/11, haha — I'm aware he was well-known by the US government, but I always remember people talking about Yousef for the first WTC bombing.
I'll be completely honest with you — I keep up decently with current events, but I've honestly never heard of a single person on the current watch list. Some are really interesting, though!
I wonder if it was the same back then? If I don't know any of them now, I can't imagine a foreign man would really stick out to anyone but someone intimately familiar with his geopolitical history.
Idk! Maybe I just don't check out that page enough. Could be my bad.
The attack on the Cole was a huge deal and a perpetual story from the time it happened until 9/11. I was an adult back then. Osama bin Laden was known. It's arguably why he became the face of the attack. I mean Khalid Sheik Mohammed came up with the idea and planned it and Mohammed Atta & Co carried it out. Yes ObL bore responsibility too for being at the top of the organization they were part of, but he initially denied involvement and it's never been sussed out exactly what he did. The reason we were hearing his name before the sun set that day was because we already knew his name.
Gotcha! Thanks for the context. I was a young teen (and had lived overseas for a few years before that) so maybe I just didn't catch his name like everyone else did.
Either way, it *is* odd that Brand had a costume ready to go, right? I know who Putin is, but I don't just have a Putin costume in my closet waiting for the perfect moment, haha.
A Osama costume doesn't really have much to it, to be fair, especially if you're going for just enough to get a rise out of people. White tunic (even just a bath robe, really), white scarf, fake beard, and maybe an army jacket.
I was a 17 year old in the UK at the time of 9/11 and I certainly knew who Bin Laden was before that. I'm pretty confident that most of my friends did too.
Yeah he’s talked about it before. He mentioned that at the time he was addicted to crack and heroin and admitted he made some fucked up decisions in his life as a result, this incident being one of them.
I mean, part of me is glad he wasn't sober and thinking "let's dress up as Osama bin Laden the day after 9/11", lol.
Admittedly I've never heard of this guy before (never watched MTV and don't really like comedies), but from his Wikipedia it sounds like he had a lot of issues growing up.
(I can't imagine what kind of father would take his teenage son to Thailand to visit prostitutes! I'm sure that did nothing but help Brand respect women!)
Bin Laden was already on the US’ radar in the late 90’s. I remember watching a profile on him on CNN when I was in high school, so probably around 98-2000.
Most of us learned who he was as a result of 9/11. That South Park episode didn't air until November, when we had a couple months to learn about him.
Certainly people more dialed into terrorist watchlists and the Middle East would have already known who he was, and to a lot of other people he might have been a name they had heard before.
It definitely was 9/12 as any article about Russell Brand dressing up as Bin Laden will tell you.
Just because no one confirmed anything or claimed anything for months doesn't mean that the leading theory wasn't already Bin Laden/Al Qaeda and it doesn't mean that Brand couldn't've easily gone out on a limb dressing up as Bin Laden/a similarly dressed Islamic extremist.
This is just false. News casters were throwing Bin Ladens name out there before those things even fell. Tenent has told Bush that Bin Kaden was responsible by 9:30 that morning. No one was confused about who did it.
"At around 9:30 pm on September 11, 2001, George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), told President George W. Bush and U.S. senior officials that the CIA's Counterterrorism Center had determined that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were responsible for the September 11 attacks"
"As the media covered the 9/11 attacks unfolding, many quickly speculated that bin Laden was behind the attacks."
Because while it does say it took months for him to take responsibility that's only because it takes some time for a donkey to carry a video cassette out the mountains of Afghanistan. No one was confused about it. The entire planet knew who it was by lunch that day.
But less than 24 hours after 9/11? There's shocking and there's being a completely inconsiderate twat as people lay dead or dying in the smoking rubble.
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u/FilthyRichNepoBaby 22h ago
Or turned up for work at MTV on September 12th 2001 dressed as Bin Laden.
He's always been a twat.